Daily News Roundup, 11/13/07: Perry Campaigns In Iowa

Governor Rick Perry seems to have forgotten a cardinal rule of politics — if you're explaining, you're losing — as he has begun justifying his endorsement of Rudy Giuliani. This is different than the usual litany of reasons one pol gives for throwing his weight in with another, because it is distinctively red meat, and should come as a surprise to anyone familiar with Giuliani's policies: Perry says Giuliani will overturn Roe vs. Wade.

Not that Giuliani will overturn it by himself, of course. Perry says Giuliani will appoint the right kinds of Supreme Court judges who would then take it upon themselves to get rid of Roe. He's making this claim in Iowa, which I guess features a Republican audience that wouldn't automatically be suspicious of Perry's claims about Giuliani, which is the sort of audience he might run into in Texas. In most cases Perry would be the right guy to deliver this message, I suppose, but when it is about Giuliani this sounds less like simple stumping and more like a sales pitch to an unconvinced base, both about Giuliani and, separately, Perry's motivations.

Yesterday we also talked about Perry, specifically discussing the office policy of deleting emails and how that practice was brought to a screeching halt by one man's records requests. Today we have a similar story about the Bush administration, although in this case the one man is U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy. The ruling is in response to a lawsuit filed by some government watchdog groups in Washington who are convinced that some 5 million emails have already been deleted by the White House. I'm inclined to believe them, but we'll see how the legal proceedings shake out.

Things continue to devolve in Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto was placed under house arrest for a second time as part of a government effort to prevent mass protests. I'm pretty sure that if Musharraf keeps doing that he's going to have a much more unruly crowd on his hands than he currently does. Although they were once discussing a power-sharing agreement ahead of elections scheduled for January, those discussions between Bhutto and Musharraf have since ceased. As you might have guessed.

If you were worried that Blackwater wouldn't be able to find work after all of its terrible behavior in Iraq, don't be too troubled. They are up for a $15 billion contract for counter-terrorism via narcotics trade disruption. This sounds like a more aggressive mission than diplomatic defense, which, you might understand, makes a guy like me a little nervous for how it could turn out.

There are some olde tyme corruption scandals happening in Alaska, including implications about fan favorite Senator Ted Stevens of "The internet is a series of tubes" fame. It isn't limited to federal elected officials or their families, though. State government got in on the act:

"Let me count first here," Allen said, shushing a former statehouse speaker as he counted out a bribe in video footage entered as evidence in the lawmaker's September trial, one of several crowding the docket of the federal court here.

On another tape, Pete Kott, the former Republican speaker of the Alaska House of Representatives, crowed as he described beating back a tax bill opposed by oil companies. "I had to cheat, steal, beg, borrow and lie," Kott said. "Exxon's happy. BP's happy. I'll sell my soul to the devil."

Apparently, the culture of corruption was so pervasive that some lawmakers even had baseball caps made with the letters CBC on them, standing for "Corrupt Bastards Club." This is something that will bust wide open not too long from now, probably shortly before summer, and will probably lead to the coring out of large portion of the state's elected leadership and representation.

Lastly today, I'd like to leave you with a link to Tom Tancredo's new ad, which says that you'd better make him President or everything is going to be blown up by terrorists who are also illegal immigrants. I wish I was overstating it, but I'm not. Have a look for yourself.